Member-only story
The Prompt: Summarize what you learned about Pittsburgh’s history in your school days? As an adult, did you learn anything new about Pittsburgh’s history that surprised you? What parts of local history would you like to learn about now?
I attended a public school in a blue-collar suburb of Pittsburgh. To my recollection, we never studied local, regional, or state history. Somewhere along the line I remember the names “William Penn” and “William Pitt” and the tidbit that William Pitt had never been to Pittsburgh. I have some vague memories of touching on Ft. Pitt (Ft. Duquesne) as part of studying American colonial history, but nothing more about Pittsburgh.
Thus, everything has surprised me.
A few examples
- Pittsburgh and some parts of Southwestern Pennsylvania were once attached to the British Colony of Virginia. This led to the discovery that a plantation with enslaved human beings existed about five miles from where I grew up, The property remained in the hands of the original owners until the 1980’s and is now relabeled as a farm. The owner of this plantation and person who enslaved dozens of human beings is designated as the man who founded Clairton. That seems like a salient point in current conversations about Clairton.
